Passionate about IP! Since June 2003 the IPKat weblog has covered copyright, patent, trade mark, info-tech and privacy/confidentiality issues from a mainly UK and European perspective. The team is David Brophy, Birgit Clark, Merpel, Jeremy Phillips, Eleonora Rosati, Darren Smyth, Annsley Merelle Ward and Neil J. Wilkof. You're welcome to read, post comments and participate in our community. You can email the Kats here

For the half-year to 30 June 2015, the IPKat's regular team is supplemented by contributions from guest bloggers Suleman Ali, Tom Ohta and Valentina Torelli.

Regular round-ups of the previous week's blogposts are kindly compiled by Alberto Bellan.

Tuesday, 12 June 2007

Ever anxious that the UK Intellectual Property Office's website should be of maximum benefit to its many users, the IPKat has learned that the Cabinet Office is proposing to reorganise government websites and to change the way they are accessed. If this proposal is adopted, many individual sites will be affected. The UK-IPO site, for one, is likely to be accessed via a wider government portal instead of being directly available.

Above, left: the UK-IPO website is bright, cheerful and imaginative

If you want to get through to the UK ex-Pat Office (here) with a minimum of clicking and clucking, email Mark Pacey here and assure him of your concern. Mark is the UK-IPO's Chief Information Officer and he'd love to hear from you.

Department of Trade and Industry's Innovation home page here: Merpel says, can you spot the carefully concealed link to the UK-IPO, craftily hidden under the obsolete label Patent Office?

This particular kat still thinks that the organisation of the UK-IPO website leaves a lot to be desired, and does not necessarily view the proposed changes with as much trepidation as others might. I refer the reader to the sidebar on the left regarding conflicting kat views.

There are two issues here. Yes, the organisation of the UK-IPO does leave something to be desired. However, the concept of having a comprehensive and directly accessible website is something to be cherished. For its faults, the UK-IPO contains a wealth of valuable information of great public interest (albeit poorly indexed at times) and it would be very sad to see it threatened.